††Hydroelectricity is electricity generated by moving water. The first users of water power were the Chinese, who used rivers to operate water pumps and flour mills. Further developments did not take place until 1868 when a French engineer named Aristide Berges found a way to use the power from a nearby waterfall to run a generator at his paper factory. The first public supply of electricity to be generated by water power was at Godalming in Surrey, England in 1881. Today about one-fifth of the world's energy comes from hydroelectricity.
